Cuckoo at JNU
Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi is often parodied for being a hothouse for students in severe specs, scarves, kurtas or salwars, jholis in ethnic prints, and long hair (for men) or short hair (for women), preaching socialism long after its expire-by date.
I’m not sure how broadly the stereotype applies, but a quick visit makes it look like the twin of UC Santa Cruz, a campus so leftist it makes Berkeley look like Princeton. Both are campuses of low-rise buildings hidden among forestation. Both are spread out across hilltops with bus and bike lanes winding through brush and little sense of urbanness. JNU in particular feels like a little jungle hidden inside a major city. Both have strident banners damning capitalism and imperialism plastered across their central buildings.
The JNU campus has clotheslines stretched across trees and little campsites hidden in the foliage. Yesterday evening, students were on day one of a hunger strike to let college electricians unionize. One large banner supported Naxalites while a smaller one dissented. Globalization is apparently Satan and socialism is apparently the way forward rather than a thoroughly discredited economic relic.
I admire the passion, but not the stupidity — no man works harder for another than for himself. The prosperity flowing through India right now owes everything to Manmohan Singh’s term as finance minister and very little to Nehru.
Ah well, they’re still young. The scary thing isn’t college students in full-throated socialist roar. The scary thing is these folks growing up, minds unchanged, and running the government or blowing up trains.
on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007, 12:24 pm in Economics, Photos, Politics, Travel › 
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Surreal shit. And to think this is 2007!
Some people are caught in a time wrap. People are always ’slaves’ to what they think they know.
“Surreal shit” and “time warp” are two excellent ways of describing this. Was there even one poster on campus denouncing Naxalite violence? I wonder what they think of China.
I think the fraction of kids from JNU that actually end up blowing up shit is vanishingly small. I am sure almost all of those kids come from middle to upper middle class families, who can afford to do crap like like this. You’d be hard pressed to actually find them doing something more than the symbolic gesture (hunger strike) or attend a symposium. For real political action go the institutions where the fight for control of the Student Unions are physical, bloody and sometimes fatal (Kerala and Tamil Nadu are the states that I am familiar with). The word that comes to mind here is dilettante.
Not to make excuses or anything but I am sure the roster of the Maoists are almost exclusively peasantry who traditionally have had the shit beat out of them by the landed gentry. Land reform in Kerala was a bloody fight.
These kids need to chill out and grab a coke from the nearest McDonalds.
Great post. Thanks.
One minor quip, however, I have is with this remark - “The prosperity flowing through India right now owes everything to Manmohan Singh’s term as finance minister and very little to Nehru.”
If one man can be credited for India’s current economic trajectory, it should/would be Narsimha Rao, who was the PM at the time.
Any guy with a graduate degree in Economics could have pinpointed what needed to be done in order to alleviate the 91 foreign reserve crisis, however, what was next to impossible was to provide the political will and cover for the policies, that needed to be enacted asap.
ah, the ignorance: India owes everything to Manmohan Singh.. For a deeper understanding of the Indian Economy pick up its history and look how, where and by whom the capacity building took place…
>The prosperity flowing through India right now owes everything to Manmohan Singh’s term as finance minister and very little to Nehru.
This is too difficult to digest, and too far fetched by any standards.
I say we’ve got to find a way to put all those who think that way in a common place so that we know where they are. A barbed wire fence, with dogs, machine gun posts and round-the-clock surveillance to ensure that they don’t get out…
But seriously, can’t believe why the taxpayer is paying for all this.
A contrarian view (of sorts): Yes, the JNU stuff is “surreal shit” and these “dilettantes” do seem to be stuck in a “time warp”… but aren’t there many campuses in the US/ Europe/ Latin America where you’d find something similar… yes/ no?
Nehruvian/Indira Gandhian socialism threw the Indian economy into reverse.
Of course, like Santa Cruz. Both colleges and M.I.A. regularly name-check the PLO. But one difference is the banners aren’t permanent fixtures, they tend to be present during rallies and not stuck on central buildings. Maybe the building in the photos is the student center.
owes everything to Manmohan Singh’s term as finance minister and very little to Nehru.
Manish, Manish,
Manmohan Singh did not prop out of blue. He was a close confidant of Mrs. Gandhi. Before he was finance minister, he was chairman planning commission, and reserve bank [,and also Professor @ JNU]. As people have pointed out that N. Rao govt. was forced by IMF to take some tentative opening of economy to avoid foreign reserve crisis and loan default, and he (PM Singh now) had the gumption to go with the recommendations of IMF. Then even BJP did a lot of opening of economy. Most of all Y2K, back room boys like TCS (Tata Consultancy Services). All these Silicon Valley - IIT/ Engineering College graduates were waiting to jump on outsourcing bandwagon.
JNU is a marxist/ maoist campus, but has produced some well very known alum. In social sciences, they are one of the top school in India. A lot of civil servants (IAS/ IFS officers) enroll in JNU while they prepare for civil service exams, and that is their biggest contribution and legacy.
Manish, I broke my comments in three parts, and decimated it.
JNU has never been a Nehruvian bastion. It has produced some very prominent Communist Party leaders.
I think it has a place in Indian thought.
JNU’s colorful history
From the wiki entry there are 2 maoist leaders, but for the 2 maoists there are thousands of babus grinding out a living, paying taxes like the rest of us (High commissions,newspapers, IAS, etc) working for the man.
India’s recent prosperity did not come with one change in leadership. It is like pretending that Ronald Reagan caused the fall of the Soviet Union.
But seriously, can’t believe why the taxpayer is paying for all this.
Nitin, the taxpayer does pay for the education of students not only at JNU but also, say, the IITs. And the posters you see above are paid for by the students themselves.
Both Sitaram Yechury and Prakash Karat are JNu alumni
Don’t be so quick as to deem this students as stupid.
I’m less scared of unchanged minds blowing up trains than the changed minds blowing up entire countries simply to preserve their “prosperity”.
:)
To be in equilibrium, a balance is needed. Both sides are fighting hard.